Global Apparel Network:

Developing visual communication solutions for over a decade.

In 2000, Joe Shohfi and Danette Gorman set out to solve one of the biggest problems limiting B2B across the retail industry: communicating visual information.

As email and file sharing became mainstream, they noticed that much of the daily communication remained disconnected. The retail industry struggled to find ways to reconcile written and visual information; in wholesale from communicating design specifications and sales line sheets, to large retailers communicating visual merchandising to stores, Joe and Danette saw an opportunity for innovation. Global Apparel Network was established to develop the resulting patented software solutions.

VisualityMail, GAN's first product, achieved industry-wide recognition as a desktop platform used by corporate retailers worldwide.

While technology has continued to evolve, the company's core principles have stayed the same. GAN is still driven by the desire to innovate image based communications and deliver top-notch customer service.

Located in New York with offices in Los Angeles, Munich, and Zurich, GAN has a client base ranging from small and mid-sized businesses to large enterprise organizations.

Executive Leadership

We have a diverse and talented executive management team focused on executing GAN's strategy to enable customers to connect and conduct business in the digital age.

Joe Shohfi

Chairman and CEO

Co-founder and Co-inventor of GAN’s patented
technology. He is an innovative entrepreneur with
over 30 years of experience in the apparel, retail, and
technology industries. His passion is for identifying
market opportunities and developing business
strategies and products to realize their potential.

Danette Gorman

EVP, Customer Experience

Co-founder and Co-inventor of GAN’s patented
technology. She brings twenty years of combined
product development and fashion technology
experience from companies such as Jones Apparel
Group, Gerber Technology, GAP, Banana Republic,
Nordstrom, and American Eagle Outfitters. Her in-depth
understanding of the interactions across the
global apparel industry equips her to lead strategic
account development and Customer Experience for
the company. Danette continues to support the
conception of new products for the company.

Patented Technology

What is Visual Communication?

A picture tells a thousand words.

Clients use our flexible software solutions to share images for a wide variety of purposes. For our wholesale users, sales teams can communicate entire collections of hundreds of styles with all their corresponding information, without any downloads required by the retail buyers who can easily respond, move into their buying process and even place orders. Updates are now simple with seasonal styles added to collections and shared with buyers. For our corporate retailers, store display instructions are added to visual directives and shared across the company.

All of these visual communications exist in the company's living ecosystem, each with its own unique history. The resulting data can be used in revenue reports, evaluations, and efficiency tracking.

Patent Specifications

We hold the patent on visual communication — literally. Representing thousands of hours of market research and information design, our patent is the inspiration behind all of GAN's products.

The GAN patent, U.S. Patent Number 7,426,693, was filed on Feb. 7, 2005 and claims priority to three applications, the earliest of which was filed on August 7, 2002.

The '693 Patent is directed to a visual communication (VC) tool (e.g. An iPad app) that is used to create visual arrangements and present these visual arrangements to others for feedback and comments in an efficient and secure manner. An author may use the VC tool to generate a visual arrangement and publish the arrangement to desired recipient(s). The published arrangement is stored or uploaded to a server, and a recipient accesses the arrangement in response to a notification from the server. The recipient may transmit any text or numeric comment (e.g. quantities) on the visual arrangement back to the author where the comment is correlated and displayed with the respective visual arrangement.

The GAN Patent includes 18 claims directed to systems and methods for visual communication including one or more of the aforementioned features. During prosecution, the Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reviewed the application and allowed it on September 16, 2008. There are one or more continuation applications pending with the USPTO.